Meal Plan Monday! 1/16/12

Welcome to our very first installment of Meal Plan Monday! I’m taking submissions from readers for this series in exchange for a free e-book and 10 bonus entries into our next giveaway. But for this week, I had a reader suggested that I go first, so, here goes!

I use Plan to Eat for my meal planning, and I seriously don’t know what I would do without it. I can easily input recipes from all my favorite blogs, drag and drop them into my meal calendar, and then PTE spits out a grocery list for me for what to get! But that’s just the basics of the program. There’s so much more I could say about Plan to Eat, but I’ll save it for my review and giveaway post for a year’s subscription, coming soon!

Here’s a screenshot of one of my weeks that I’ve planned (click to enlarge):

Sunday

And there you have it! One week’s worth of things I love to cook in my kitchen.

Other Plans & Things

As I mentioned in the announcement last week, I’d love for this series to be more than just about meals. If you choose to submit a meal plan for Meal Plan Mondays, we want to hear about what else is going on with your real food lifestyle. I thought of the following topics to discuss, so again, I’ll go first!

Food/Nutrition Goals

One of my biggest current goals is to start producing more of my own food. The Pre-Husband and I are looking into aquaponics systems, so we can grow both garden veggies and fish to eat! We are also preparing to get our own chickens for eggs, and possibly meat.

Health Goals

PH and I are going to be starting the GAPS diet in the coming weeks to heal our guts. I’m putting up a post to explain more about this ASAP. Reversing gut damage is a huge health priority for me, because I believe Hippocrates when he said, “ALL disease begins in the gut!”

Questions

I ask you guys questions all the time on Facebook, but I’ll throw another one here as well. Does anyone have any tips to share with me as I get ready to start GAPS? I would love to hear some advice from experienced GAPSters!

Kitchen Tips

My latest thing is keeping a bag in the freezer to toss vegetable scraps in for making stock. I was keeping it in the fridge at first, and then realized that doesn’t really make any sense! May as well freeze it as you go, before any of it goes bad.

As for gadgets, I was pretty lacking in this department until recently. I don’t even have a toaster, for goodness’ sake. (That’s because I live in a solar-powered hippie home.) But I did just get a Cuisinart Mini-Prep food processor, and I’m in love. It may have a little something to do with the fact that it’s adorably pink, though.

My “conversion” story

In a nutshell, I was always a bit of a natural health freak, but I just never really cared about food until Christmas of 2010. That’s when my mom, who’d been seeing a real-food holistic nutritionist and had drastic health improvements, gave me my copy of Nourishing Traditions. I started cooking real, traditional food and researching real nutrition, started blogging about it, and the rest is pretty much history!

Here we all are, one year later, gathered for a fully real-food Christmas dinner!

Now, it’s your turn!

To be featured in this series, submit a week’s worth of meal planning from your meal calendar — preferably with links to recipes if they can be found online — to me by email: emily @ butterbeliever . com (minus the anti-spammy spaces.) Of course since we’re all about real, traditional food around here, your meals have got to be legit. So obviously, no toxic, fake, or processed ingredients. If you’re not sure what counts as real food and what doesn’t, dig around here a little or just ask me.

Your weekly meal plan could be as simple as just a list with days of the week and what you’re feeding your household for each day — breakfast, lunch, dinner, and hopefully even a few snacks or dessert thrown in there. Or you could get fancy, and submit an image from your meal calendar, or a spreadsheet, or whatever. We just wanna know what you eat!

Also, feel free to include your take any of the other topics I discussed above. I want to hear more about your real food lifestyle! Pictures are great, too.

(What’s in it for me?)

If your submission is chosen to be featured, you’ll get some goodies!

A free e-book. My very first e-book to be sold on the site is coming shortly, and each featured Meal Plan Monday submitter will be getting a free copy. (as soon as it’s ready!) It’ll be worth like, lots of money of course.

10 bonus entries into the next giveaway. Whatever the next prize giveaway is here at BB, you’ll get 10 bonus entries for free!

Promotion of your blog or website. You’ll of course get a link and I’ll write you a little blurb, but you could also include links to your own recipes in your weekly meal plan!

So, if you’d like to participate, send in your submissions and I’ll start posting them — and giving you your goodies, of course! I can’t wait to see what you’ve all got planned in your kitchens. See you back here next week!

Hi Emily, thanks heaps for sharing my Chicken and Apple Breakfast Sausage recipe! I love you Meal Plan Mondays idea – I’m trying to become a better meal planner, so I’m going to follow along and see what I can learn 🙂

i am a Gapster! i have been doing GAPs since september and i can say it has helped tremendously!! i have a lot of good hints and i would love to share them with you. how do you want me to share my ideas, your comments, Facebook, or email?

I would say be sure to make ahead lots of broth before starting intro. I was pretty exhausted during the first couple of weeks and I was really wishing I had some broth already made up. Plus, if you can make a few other things ahead, that is also helpful. I wouldn’t do too much in case you find you react to certain foods, but especially having some partially prepared foods is very helpful for the first few. A chest freezer comes in really handy. I didn’t get one until about a month into GAPS, but I love having it now. (So, it might be in the corner of my living room, but it works great!)

Love this idea. I post real food meal plans every other week over at The Better Mom, many of which (you’ll be happy to know) are GAP legal. Would love for you to share this with your readers. Blessings to you as you continue on your journey with GAPS! Here is the link to our real food meal plans! Blessings, Kellyhttp://www.thebettermom.com/bi-weekly-meal-plans/